Previously here on RouteNote we wrote about how one of our newest partners Spotify is launching very soon in the US market. However, today Spotify has new news, they have sent in their iPhone application for Apple to review. It is not guaranteed that the application will be accepted into the iTunes App store, mainly because it seems as those Spotify is a direct competitor to iTunes and their application may slow music sales in the iTunes store. Anyways, here is a preview of the new application.
This morning we got sent a great link from one of our artists about a glowing review of our service. Here at RouteNote we are always trying to improve our service and provide artists what they want. If anyone ever has any suggestions on what you want to see on our service then please get in touch and let us know.
A slow, red fire burns within me, steady and warm like coal. Its heat suffuses me, and little sparks and snaps off it, bearing my mind away – back to old friends and remembered joys. This glowing kernel resides inside me because I have seen Fat Freddy’s Drop play live. I was late. I missed the support act. I scarcely had time to buy a beer, and as soon as I had something wonderful happened in my ears.
They played two consecutive nights at the Camden Roundhouse and I was at the second – the last night of their UK tour before they went home to play the Aussie/NZ summer circuit. I loved their album before I went in, and I knew they had a reputation for being great live, but even so I was blown away. In case you don’t already know, they’re a Kiwi seven-piece dub and reggae outfit, that have released one live and one studio album, and they’re big… Sorry, make that BIG down under.
Their music is crafted. This isn’t something that’s been thrown together during a drunken evening in someone’s garage – this has been worked on, pieced, built and blended together. Usually their songs will have a big, warm, deep bass line, something that doesn’t seem complex, but then as the layers of music – a drumbeat, some vibes, maybe a flute, a soft vocal – come in, an unsuspected complexity evolves, the head of the bar isn’t where you thought it was to begin with, and the key’s changed and you’re surrounded by this lush, slow, throbbing mathmos of sound.
They’re not a band that will make you fight your way to the front to get your head down into the mosh pit. They’re not a band that will keep you bouncing like a frog on speed for ninety minutes. Fat Freddy’s Drop are a band who will wrap you up in music, draw you into their performance with textured, fluid, beautifully engineered noises, and a togetherness, a tightness that comes only from practice and professionalism. More than this, their live performances are unique and structured in such a way that they have a definite culmination – an apex that is all the more significant and memorable for the fact that their drops are few and far between.
The Roundhouse gig I attended took the songs I knew and elaborated upon them, with different takes on each. There are sections in their tracks where they take the rolling beat they’ve layered from ten different instruments weaving in and out, strip it back, and then put everything together for the most grinsome, satisfying drop. There was a section during which an acoustic tune had been spun into a long, pulsing, almost trance-like piece of music, totally different from the album version, and it was only after spinning the crowd into this ten-minute trance that they stopped… and let it drop.
Everyone. Every single person in that audience was smiling like a loon and dancing like a happy toddler in front of the stereo. It was a musical epiphany. It was like Jake and Elwood seeing the light. I wanted to do backflips. I can’t adequately describe how good their live show is. Even to describe the fun and antic japery of their sweaty, singlet wearing trombone player is more than I can do, let alone the whole glory of their horn section.
Fat Freddy’s studio album is called ‘Based On a True Story’. If you don’t like it, you can’t come to my birthday party. They should have released their second in October last year (’08), but here we are in March and it hasn’t been released yet, so all I can do is sit, and wait, and Hope.
A hot new addition to RouteNote.com this month has been the “eagerly awaited” release of Steph’s ‘Chasing Butterflies’. The catchy, up-beat (strangely familiar) track is mainly recognised from its radio and TV time for a CSL commercial, which aired in 2008. A release of the song had been insisted on by adoring fans.
“At last! This song has been stuck in so many people’s heads since it appeared on a certain TV advertisement last summer, and its kind of strange to finally hear the whole song. But worth waiting for. I really hope her other song ‘Beautiful’ appears on iTunes soon.”
“This artist is going to be another huge product of lancashire. I can’t wait for her second song to be released.”
If you like well produced, melodic, modern pop ‘Chasing Butterflies’ comes with high recommendations.
Huge, gritty basslines, new wave and electro guitars and songwriting join up with buzzing guitar hooks in a grungey Nirvana style to back up a weird, caterwauling vocal. An album both spiky and approachable, this has got more depth to it than is at first obvious, especially in terms of production. Look forward to a second album, hopefully before too long. I bet whoever played guitar and keyboard is a wonderful person, and is an asset to his company, wherever he works, and deserves a raise.
This is pretty glorious, melodic pop. A nice heavy piano and loads of vocal harmonies back up a soaring lead vocal, tickled at by cheeky little basslines that pull the songs along, just pausing every now and then for a little Stevie Wonder minor change before bounding off again to let the guitarist romp through a few flowerbeds and chase some other guitarists round the park. There are echoes of Ryan Jones (from one of RouteNote’s other bands, The Hitchcock Rules) in the front man’s voice, or Ben Folds, to make a more widely comprehensible comparison. Buy it if you like Ben Folds Five, the Beautiful South, Phoenix, or puppies. Great production for an indie band, too.
Memotone is somewhere between Lemon Jelly and the Cinematic Orchestra, which for a one man act, recording on an 8 track and a laptop is a pretty incredible achievement. William Yates has put together a bewilderingly large array of instruments into a really crystal clear, deep and textured soundscape, blending live instruments, samples, glitchy computer noises and sound effects like air raid sirens, lairy kids arguing in corridors and canned laughter. There are odd moments of humour and unease, drifting clouds of sound, sharp beats that bring you back to your senses and then drop away again to let warm, live double bass lines pour into your ears and build into complex little sonic poems that wrap back to the beats. I really like it. If I wasn’t already listening to it, I would buy a copy. In fact, petition him to get vinyl pressed, so I can buy a copy.
Loose, bluesy, indie rock in a style mixing influences from both modern and (to me) 1970’s Neil Diamond, Rod Stewart sounds. The singer’s voice in particular reminds me of ‘The Rod’ at times. As a whole the album is more modern and grungey/garagey than this might suggest. Pick the Diamond out of it…
This album is like a chocolate cake. Heavy, dark, rich and possibly too sweet for it’s own good: undertones from viola and double bass provide a landscape over which finger-picked guitar rambles and eddies. These are all secondary considerations, because Hollie’s voice, when it breaks into the drifting feel of tracks like ‘The Swallow’ is clear, pure toned, powerful, and the major feature of this album. Her songwriting shows a remarkable depth of emotion and expressiveness for a 19 year old’s debut, and the sophomoric rack of lust, angst and betrayal is treated with punishingly frank introspection. Despite the subjectivity of the songs and the familiarity of the themes, there is a lyricism and a power of allusion that distinguishes these songs from the run of the mill. Recommended to fans of Laura Marling or Damien Rice.
<– Buy it on iTunes
<–buy it on iTunes
<– Buy it on iTunes
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